Tater Tot Casserole

The first time I made this, Anthony and I ate half of it right away.  Which was really something because my casserole dish is very large (a 13x9 I think, instead of the usual 11x7).

 
It quickly became one of my Foundational recipes - I make this at least once a month.  It's filling, it's fun, it's satisfying, and it is very versatile - like lasagna, I use Tater Tot Casserole to use up whatever veggies are abundant.

 I have no idea how I came upon the recipe at Snarky Vegan (I'll let you head over there to view the original recipe).  The moment I saw it, I knew I had to make it.

That was May 2011, and since then my roux-making abilities have increased greatly.  Here are the guidelines I use and some pictures!






Prep:
Grease a casserole dish
Cook a lot of tater tots
Shred a lot of cheese
Make a roux (step 3 of this simply recipes mac and cheese recipe)
Steam veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, greens, whatever
Finely chop veggies like onions
Shred veggies like carrots



Assembly:
Mix some of the roux with the veggies in the bottom of the pan
Layer cooked tots on top, and pour the rest of the roux over everything
Top with shredded cheese

Cook:
Cover with foil, and throw into a pre-heated oven at 350/375.
Cook for a while (15 minutes?) until the cheese is melty
Remove foil and cook longer if needed to evaporate excess moisture

 

Peanut Butter Cookies!

It's important to me to have a sizable repertoire of low-fuss awesomely good recipes.  Also, when I find something I like, my devotion and loyalty are like nothing else on earth. 

Enter what is perhaps the ONLY peanut butter cookie recipe I will ever use for the rest of my life.

These cookies turned out so good, I have no reason to experiment with unknowns.  I'll let you head over to Simply Recipes for the recipe, which I made verbatim with no deviations* like I do when I'm cooking.  It has all the hallmarks of being a good recipe - it is exactly what you'd expect a Peanut Butter Cookie recipe to be, and if you're any kind of baker, you will already have the ingredients on hand.  If you don't already have all the ingredients on hand, add them to your "Things I Should Always Have on Hand In My Kitchen" grocery list.

Enjoy!

*I ended up refrigerating the dough for 12 hours because I was too tired last night after making Black Bean Burgers and Spinach Rice Casserole.

Easy Macoroni and Cheese

Back in my "days of yore" (single, living alone for the first time, 2007ish), macaroni and cheese was one of the first things I chose to learn to cook.

Until I recently discovered how to make a roux, or cheese reduction sauce, this cheesy heart attack of a meal was my go-to-recipe when I could afford all the dairy it calls for!

I didn't note down the original source of this recipe, but when I googled the aptly named "Triple Cheese Mac Attack" I found one reference to a yahoo foods recipe at a site called 'strong and healthy living'

"Triple Cheese Mac Attack"
2 cups cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
Garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 cups extra-sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
½ cup Swiss cheese, shredded
1 (7-ounce) package elbow macaroni, cooked and drained

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cottage cheese, sour cream, egg, salt, garlic salt, and black pepper. Add cheddar and Swiss cheeses and blend well. Cook macaroni as directed on package and drain well.

Add cooked macaroni to cheese mixture and blend until well coated. Add macaroni mixture to a greased 2- or 2½-quart baking dish and bake, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes.

My changes
If I have ricotta on hand, I'll use some of that instead of cottage cheese.  I add 1 Tbsp of Sriracha, and use garlic powder instead of garlic salt.  You can leave out the swiss if you don't have any.

I love this recipe because you pretty much just throw everything together.  Since it's just cooked noodles with a lot of cheese, it's also hard to mess up this recipe.

Spaghetti Sandwich

Behold!

Great Ways We Used Anthony's Spaghetti Sauce:
Cheesy bread sticks to eat it directly
Lasagna Rolls
Real, Actual Lasagna (recipe coming soon!)
Spaghetti

Spaghetti Sandwiches - one of my favorite foods besides mac and cheese.  Usually I use spaghetti noodles broken in half, but Anthony likes this with macaroni noodles, which does make it easier to eat in sandwich form.

Lasagna Rolls

Lasagna is my ultimate "grudge" recipe.  One I tried to make in my early days of cooking, before I had any mojo for cooking at all.  As I've mentioned before, most of the things I would make in those early days turned out so badly I would try to choke down as much as I could, weep over the waste of food/money and my ineptitude/failure, throw out the entire meal, and give up cooking for months before trying a recipe I might not fuck up.


Making terrible lasagna was particularly devastating for me since the recipe was from one of my favorite authors in a wonderful book: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This book was pivotal in my transition from a corporate food junkie to a cook-from-scratch home gardener.  I thought that the recipes included would have to be awesome, as they are favorites and frequents in the Kingsolver kitchen.  I was trying to do the right thing - learning to cook at home using local ingredients purchased at local small grocers instead of depending on a destructive, amoral global food system.  When my first attempt failed, it wasn't just a waste of my limited money, it was a reflection on my inability to affect change in the world.

Yes, I know, I take things (a little too) seriously.

When I recently found a recipe for Lasagna Cupcakes, I felt vindicated.  I mean, fuck lasagna!  With all its complications and nuances!  I'll show them!  I'll simply bypass the entire blase ordeal and make something much more interesting.

By the time I found a recipe for Lasagna Rolls, I had, in fact, made successful, non-sucky lasagna for my friend in the Emerald Valley Time Exchange who wanted some help making a weeks worth of meals.  Since I was making it for someone else, I put my heart and soul into making it not suck, and she was there to help me at every layer.  "A little more"  "that looks perfect"  "that way the noodles won't dry out"

But still, fuck lasagna.  I will always resent lasagna for being invented and being a thing that so many people like to eat.  Likewise, I will always have a special place in my heart for lasagna-related knock offs.  These rolls taste just as good as lasagna and somehow seem easier to make.  Lasagna rolls and cupcakes are more fun to take to a potluck or to serve for guests, and a very easy way to turn this traditional (predictable) dish into something unique and surprising.

The recipe I jotted down in a hurry was from what I think was a "Cooking School" edition of "Taste of Home" magazine.  I couldn't find the exact recipe, but here is a list of all the ones they had on their site, and here is the one that's closest to what I copied.  The second time I made these, I made some adaptations, noted below.

Lasagna Rolls

4 oz softened cream cheese
10 oz, 1 package, frozen spinach, thawed
1 1/4 cups mozzarella, divided (maybe more)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (maybe more)
6 lasagna noodles, cooked and drained

Oven at 375 degrees.  Mix cream cheese, spinach, 1 cup mozzarella and Parmesan.  Mix until well blended.  Spread onto noodles.  Roll up tightly.

Place seam sides down in a 9-inch square baking dish with some sauce in the bottom.  Top rolls with sauce and remaining cheese.  Bake 30 minutes or until heated through.

How I Made These Even Better:

Increase noodles to 10, which all fit (tightly) in an 8-inch square pan.

Add a few Tbsp of the pasta sauce to the cheese mixture.

For 10 noodles, add 8 oz ricotta to cheese mixture, and use ~3 oz cream cheese.

Use fresh spinach! Tear into bite sized pieces.

Mix the cheese first, add dried herbs (like "Italian Seasoning" and let sit while the noodles are cooking.

Roll each roll in some sauce before placing into the pan. 

Bake covered with foil for the first 20 minutes, then take foil off and test for done-ness every 5 minutes or so until it's just right.

Once you have some kitchen mojo, you realize that most recipes are just loose templates.  It's one reason I forget to measure while I'm cooking for this blog.  You just kind of know what works and what doesn't.  You talk to people about food and they tell you what works and what doesn't.  You know what you like.  You learn more about how heat, chemistry, steam, moisture, etc work together to cook your food, and you learn how to manipulate them to do your bidding.

If you don't have kitchen mojo yet, TRUST ME it gets better!  You will make some truly awful things but after a while things will start to click.  I recommend picking a few foods you love and keep trying and trying to make them until they turn out good.  Research online and talk to people who cook about how to cook rice, how to cook pasta, or different tricks or tips to keep your shit from burning, drying out, getting mushy, etc.

Please don't give up.  If I can do it, you can too!

I know that's cheesy as hell but so is good lasagna.

Happy Cooking!

Augmented Store Bought Spaghetti Sauce ("Anthony's Special Sauce" as he wants to call it)

Whenever there is a red-sauce based meal that needs to be made in my house, I convince my reluctant-to-cook partner to make his Special Spaghetti Sauce.

This recipe can be used to make any generic, inexpensive spaghetti sauce into something that tastes indulgently gourmet, using ingredients most kitchens (should) already have on hand, even during the lean times before your next paycheck.

At such a point in our budget, I had a lot of carb- and cheese-heavy tomato sauce-based meals in mind, including Lasagna, Lasagna Rolls, Spaghetti Sandwiches and Cheesy Bread Sticks with Marinara.

Anthony's Special Sauce
Yield: more than 2 quarts with 1 normal sized jar of spaghetti sauce

Slow cooking is the key to this delicious sauce! 

If you don't have at least an hour (plus 15 minutes) save it for another day!

Ingredients
Jar(s) of spaghetti sauce (plain or flavored is fine)
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic
2 stalks celery, chopped into small pieces
1 and 1/2 bell peppers (any combo of your favorites), chopped into small pieces
a few tablespoons of (combined) oregano, basil, thyme, etc or "Italian Seasoning"
2 bay leaves, broken in half
a small pinch of allspice
a small pinch of sage
a tiny pinch of cumin
a tiny pinch of nutmeg

Put the sauce into an appropriately sized sauce pan.  Do not turn on heat yet.



Add the dry spices and let sit on top while you are chopping/pressing the garlic, onion and celery.  Letting the spices sit on the sauce for a while allows them to soften up a bit, which allows them to cook properly.








Add garlic, onion and celery to pot, turn on heat to medium heat - not too high!

Stir well.  Chop and add bell peppers.

This sauce should cook on low-ish medium heat for about an hour - stirring frequently with special care not to let the bottom burn.

With lots of time over low heat, the herbs dissolve and release flavor, the celery nearly dissolves to create small bursts of slightly sweet and crunchy flavor, and the onions dissolve without caramelizing/sweetening.  These are the most important factors that makes this sauce extra yummy.

Remember to stir frequently!

Any old shit from the store will work for this recipe!

Dress Up Boxed Mac and Cheese

If you don't have the time, willpower needed or money to make "Real" Mac and Cheese (or if you, like me, will perhaps never undo the childhood association between mac and cheese from a box and happiness and simply WANT to eat boxed mac and cheese), consider making some:

Dressed Up Mac and Cheese from a box

Megan's Creamy Sriracha Option:
Once the noodles are cooked and in the strainer, return pan to heat and melt 2 very generous Tbsp of butter (or margarine).
Add 1 very heaping Tbsp of sour cream or yogurt, and a generous splash of half and half (more as needed)
Add 1 tsp Sriracha (more to taste)
Mix well, then add cheese powder, some Parmesean and 1 handful shredded cheddar cheese

Stir in noodles, and adjust to taste.

Anthony's Good Mustard Option:
Once the noodles are cooked and in the strainer, return pan to heat and melt 3-4 very generous Tbsp of butter (or margarine).
Add 1/2 tsp of your favorite spicy brown mustard and the cheese powder (please do not use yellow mustard)
Mix well, and add more spicy brown mustard in tiny increments to taste
Shake in some Parmesan cheese, and add a handful of shredded cheddar cheese

Add noodles and adjust Parmesan, mustard to taste.

The Simple Cheese Option
Just add a handful of shredded cheese and some Parmesan.


Have you dressed up your boxed mac and cheese before?  What do you add?